High triglycerides: what to eat this week.

With high triglycerides, what to eat matters less than what to take out: first reduce liquid sugar, sweet food, white flour and alcohol. Keep vegetables, beans, oily fish and extra virgin olive oil used cold. The value can move within a few weeks, and your doctor is the one who reads it.

The results from your company health check arrive between two meetings. Cholesterol and blood pressure fine, one line out of place. I see it often in the people I work with: the first instinct is to cut out olive oil and cheese.

What causes high triglycerides?

Usually sugar and alcohol, not the fat on your plate. Triglycerides are the way your body stores energy it has not used. When you eat too much sugar and refined flour, insulin stays high and your liver builds new fat and sends it into your blood.

• The sugar you drink. Fizzy drinks, fruit juice and the mid-afternoon sweet snack matter more than the oil on your salad.
• The drink every evening. Alcohol is not a nutrient, but it raises insulin in the same way simple sugars do, and to clear it your liver turns it into fat.
• A day without movement. Muscles that stay still do not use what you have eaten, and that extra energy ends up stored as triglycerides.

What your results say, and why the number rises

The reference printed next to your number. The line used for triglycerides is 150 milligrams per decilitre: above that, the value is marked as high. That is not a diagnosis. It is the starting point for an appointment. Your doctor reads it next to your good cholesterol: together they say far more than either one alone.

The blood test is done fasting, and there is a reason. The fat from a meal travels through your blood inside carriers that leave your gut, so after a business dinner the value stays high for hours. A test done too soon tells the story of last night.

High triglycerides: what should you eat?

Vegetables at every meal, beans and lentils, oily fish several times a week, extra virgin olive oil used cold, whole fruit in measured amounts. Out of your daily routine: liquid sugar, cakes, white bread at every meal and the after-work drink.

Fibre does the quiet work. Aim for 20-30 grams a day from vegetables, beans, lentils and whole fruit, one extra portion at a time. When two diets with the same calories were compared, and one of them had far more fibre than the other, triglycerides fell by about ten per cent in six weeks.

Oily fish, several times a week. Sardines, mackerel, herring, salmon. The omega-3 fats they contain act mainly on triglycerides, and they barely touch cholesterol.

Move your calories towards the morning, and keep your evenings lighter. A full breakfast and a full lunch, a smaller dinner, not too late, and no food after dinner. Then try a few weeks with no alcohol in the evening: it is usually the lever that moves the value fastest.

Never more than two days in a row without moving. The effect of one session on your insulin sensitivity lasts a few dozen hours, then it fades. Two strength sessions a week, brisk walking or cycling on the other days, and ten to fifteen minutes on foot after your main meal.

The mistake nearly everyone makes. People cut out eggs, cheese and olive oil, and keep the orange juice in the morning, the white bread sandwich at lunchtime and the beer in the evening.

Start with your drinks and your evenings. In six weeks, tell your doctor what you have changed.